Zeiss announced a new family of cinema primes geared toward 'low budget' productions at the NAB 2017 show in Las Vegas. The CP.3 XD Cine line includes a total of ten lenses that cover full frame. Meant to replace the CP.2 line, these new lenses are more compact than their predecessors.

The 'XD' in the name stands for 'eXtended Data', which refers to the lenses' ability to store metadata like distortion and shading info when shooting – info that can greatly aide a visual effects artist in post. You can read more about it here. According to Zeiss production manager Christophe Casenave:

"Cine lenses that provide metadata are relatively expensive and, up until now, distortion and shading had to be manually measured – a time-consuming and expensive process. With ZEISS eXtended Data, we are offering Hollywood technology for everyone, providing small film teams with new creative opportunities."

While this lens line is aimed toward the cost-conscience filmmaker, to the average consumer, prices will likely still seem expensive – each XD lens will likely cost between $5000 and $8000. However Zeiss is also offering non-XD versions of the CP.3 line for slightly less cash.

Several of the non-XD lenses will be available as soon as June and July, while the eXtended Data versions will ship in the fall.

The ten compact prime lenses provide metadata and enable the correction of distortion and shading. For the first time, even low-budget productions can employ visual effects.

OBERKOCHEN/Germany, 24/04/2017.

No matter if it is Star Wars, Harry Potter or Avatar: these days, just about every film features special effects. For many small film productions, having visual effects in their movie would be a dream come true. Unfortunately, making the image fit the look of the footage has required expensive tools – until now. At the NAB Show in Las Vegas, ZEISS presented new metadata technology that makes this possible: the company has equipped its new ZEISS CP.3 XD compact lens family with ZEISS eXtended Data.

ZEISS eXtended Data supports and enhances /i-Technology

What exactly is this? "ZEISS eXtended Data is the first metadata technology which stores the lens distortion and shading – for every single frame," explains Christophe Casenave, Product Manager at ZEISS. "Moreover, all /i-Technology metadata are recorded, including the focus distance, aperture value and depth of field, which is supported by most cameras." This makes the technology ideal for working with visual effects: by using the metadata, it just takes a few clicks to modify the image generated on the computer to fit the lens characteristics, and to then splice it together with the footage to create a realistic image. Distortion and shading can be corrected or even amplified in post-production.

"It used to be that only big blockbusters could take this approach," says Casenave. "Cine lenses that provide metadata are relatively expensive and, up until now, distortion and shading had to be manually measured – a time-consuming and expensive process." However, since ZEISS has incorporated the technology into its compact CP.3 XD cine lens family, low-budget productions can now take the same approach to creating their own special effects. "With ZEISS eXtended Data, we are offering Hollywood technology for everyone, providing small film teams with new creative opportunities."

An end-to-end solution: cooperation with Ambient and Pomfort

With the ZEISS CP.3 XD, ZEISS not only offers the lenses with metadata, but has also given thought to storage and processing. It has teamed up with partners in the industry: the company Ambient has developed the MasterLockit Plus system together with ZEISS. It records all metadata along with a time code in case the technology is not supported by the camera. "This way truly everyone can work with ZEISS eXtended Data, no matter what equipment they use," says Casenave.

Thanks to the cooperation with the software developer Pomfort, distortion and shading can be modified on the set in real-time using the Pomfort tool LiveGrade Pro. The film crew already gets a sense of what the final look will be during the shoot. The film clips and lens data can be consolidated and organized with Silverstack, Pomfort's file manager.

ZEISS plans to further expand the new metadata technology in the future. "Our customers will then be able to upgrade to the new version, making the CP.3 XD a long-term investment," says Casenave.

Compact and light-weight

In addition to the metadata, filmmakers have even more reasons to get excited about the new lens family: the ten prime lenses between 15 and 135 millimeters cover full-frame. As is typical for ZEISS, the image has a clean, crisp look, and ZEISS says the image quality is excellent. "These lenses deliver outstanding results, even in light situations with a large dynamic range, i.e. highlights and shadows within the same scene," says Casenave. The maximum speed of the seven focal lengths between 25 and 135 millimeters is T2.1, the 15, 18 and 21 millimeter lenses have a speed of T2.9. With a front diameter of 95 millimeters, the lenses are light-weight and compact. They are particularly well-suited for hand-held filming or shooting with gimbals, Steadicam or drones. ZEISS has also improved focusing: the manual focus is now noticeably smoother. According to ZEISS, it is comparable with the ZEISS Master Primes and can also be operated with a small motor. The focus rotation angle is 300°. The lenses are equipped with an interchangeable mount so that they can be used on almost any camera. In addition to the ZEISS CP.3 XD, there is also a version available without metadata: the ZEISS CP.3.

Price and availability

Initially, a limited number of ZEISS CP.3 XD and CP.3 lenses will be available at dealers.

Comments

I am more and more convinced these lenses are all re-re-designs of old glass if not just literal copies of Japanese lenses with different barrels, added electronics, writings and coatings (if that much) as its already been categorically proved of some models. Germans are learning a lot from the China's business models, and.. kudos t them, I guess. But its sad everyone is sucking up to it just because of the "made-in-Germany" label. If anyone thinks ANY of these lenses has ANYTHING REMOTELY SIMILAR to what Zeiss lenses were up to 20 or 30 years ago use to be (while their new prices have time/currency equivalently skyrocketed), maybe its time everyone starts waking-up..

Isn't the lens name and its distortion data organized in a table just enough for PP? Why would a lens always transfer that data? What's the point of it? Does it change during the shoot? And I assume it doesn't transfer the current F-stop?

HmThere is a site regarding mobile DPR links to. Might be an idea to split off video from stills photography too?From what I learn from the well educated comments it seems to be an Entirely different skill.. and gearset.Just a thought.

Well, they squirm out of the woodwork whenever a new product is introduced that they can't afford or are jealous about others who might buy it. The new Olympus body was "ridiculous." The newest Nikon is "overpriced." The new Fuji medium format is "absurd" and they have demonstrated that they can achieve the same result with their "full-frame" brand XXX with their YYY kit zoom (hand-held, at that!). And of course, anything from Leica is "obscene." Sigh.....

Sounds like the “real” film makers pay double or three times the price for custom lenses. That would put your lordship back into the “Broke mentality” …why otherwise would you be looking at this forum ??

Ridicolous prerogative especially since budget lenses from Samyang do everything a Zeiss lens does and cost 300$. I use a fisheye lens on a Blackmagic - gives about 35mm equivalency and its just beautiful.

Professional cinematography demands a lot of the lenses. Zeiss lenses are carefully designed to have similar characteristics, such as exposure (T/stop), bokeh and color. There is a lot of hand assembly and testing to get the desired results.

Amateurs may cherish lenses which have individualistic traits, but that is the bane of cinematography. A considerable part of the budget is grading (color balance and exposure correction). This budget goes through the roof if each lens must be treated individually.

With Super-35 and larger sensors, a narrow DOF once confined to film is available in digital. The OOF areas must have a good and consistent nature. Camera operators frequently employ another person to pull focus, so focusing rings must be geared, have a long throw, zero backlash, and no focus shift with aperture.

You may do some of these things for $300, but a lot more for $5000. Typical cine primes go for over twice that figure, and zoom lenses in the 6 figures.

Because there's more to a lens than just sharpness? Cine lenses are designed to be seamlessly cut between, so colour, light transmission, often even length and weight to speed up lens swaps with matt boxes and stabilisers, will be matched between lenses.

Not to mention more care taken over distortion and vignetting etc; things that show up more in video than stills.

Some lenses though do have to be sharper than 8MP, 8.3MP resolution actually. That resolution is just the resolution of the video itself. Often today, many cameras have higher than 8MP sensors and when you record in 4K with those, they will take the extra pixels and downsample them to 4K, meaning the video will look better than if you just had 8.3MP and no more, meaning a lens rated higher than 8MP on those cameras, will look sharper than a lens rated at exactly 8.3MP

You could just use a photo lens, as Dheorl said, there is more than just sharpness. There is things like being able to do smooth and consistent focus pulls which you can't always easily do with photo lenses, smooth trans focus zooms, high light transmission from the lens to the sensor, consistent aperture throughout the focal range on zooms, good colour and contrast, smooth bokeh etc... no noticeable issues with CA, distortion, coma, vignetting etc... High build quality is important to.

Although there are some directors who still cling to the use of film, it has largely faded, especially in the "prosumer"/lower budget productions. If you can afford to shoot something in film, chances are you can afford to use better gear than this if you so desire.

OK, I understand using cine lenses if you're doing a $100 million blockbuster film with special effects and all, but other than that, the only special feature I'd ever desire is accurate focus pulling.

So if I'm not doing a $100 million blockbuster film with special effects I'm skeptical that a decent manual focus prime lens will give me much worse results than a cine lens costing 10 to 30 times as much.

And I'd like to add that I've recently seen at least 10 full-length films with professional actors that were filmed so badly it looked like they used a 20 dollar toy camera in the hands of a hyperactive child.

And finally, I think Spielberg could make a better video using a $600 camera than a typical college grad with a $400,000 camera.

The main point that many amateurs would find useful from a set of cine lenses if the colour signature is the same across the board. People normally take up film-making because they like shooting films, not spending hours tweaking colour in post. Sure, for a lot of productions this doesn't matter, and you're right with your Spielberg comment, story telling rules all, but having nice consistent looking footage never hurt anyone.

Or it just shows how incredibly expensive it is to test for these parameters. On a kit lens that sells in the tens of thousands of units, they can distribute the cost very well (and manufacturers probably do only a basic test of these properties). In this case, the units sold might reach a thousand if they're lucky, and Zeiss is probably testing each lens *individually*.I highly encourage you to read LensRentals' blog, it can give one amazing perspective on this issue.

Nope. A "budget" cine lens would be the Rokinon CV lines. $250-$600 for focal lengths between 12mm T2.2 and 135mm T2.2; reasonably decent quality too for the price. If you're just getting started in videography, those are what you should probably go for.

ABM: We did a comparison with high priced equipment where we needed sharpness in a high contrast test environment shooting from different angles. The cheap and modern lenses were much better in many varied scenarios than Zeiss, Arri. You have no idea what you are talking about.

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